In this episode (that’s admittedly a little late), we talk about the growing fascist movement in the US called Christian Nationalism, the Mormon church being sued, and why Protestants are walking away from religion. Don’t miss this one!
If you’re a hard core listener of TGA, you might remember that we reported on a whistleblower in the LDS church that exposed its massive financial coffers: over 100 billion dollars and growing. The whistleblower reported that the Mormon church was spending practically nothing on charitable services, this despite the fact that it has told its members that their money was being used almost exclusively for such purposes. Instead, they are hoarding money, and using it on private investments that have nothing to do whatsoever with the supposed “mission” of the organization.
A group of 9 church members are now suing the church in court for failing to properly use the money they had donated for charitable purposes.
“Despite [the church’s] representations to the contrary, a substantial and significant amount of the donations it receives are not directed towards humanitarian aid, nor any other philanthropic or charitable purpose,” the suit states.
Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of the fraud, the suit has a copy of the 2007 tax form that their investment organization had. As you can see, it’s pretty egregious:
…[A] portion of a 2007 tax form on which Clarke, Ensign Peak’s CEO, declared the book value of all the fund’s assets at $1 million — when, the suit says, it was closer to $38 billion.
Only off by 3800% you say? Why, not even hucksters like Donald Trump would dare cook the books that bad. Of course, the government did so little to actually stop the fraud that it’s practically a joke. The SEC fined Ensign Peak, the group that committed the fraud, a paltry 4 million dollars for using countless shell companies to hide it’s income. That’s roughly 0.00004% of their actual fortune. To call that pathetic would be a disservice to the word. It would be more accurate to call this whole thing immense corruption, or intense cowardice. Both are likely.
The good news is that this small class action lawsuit could balloon if the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals allows the suit to go through. Meanwhile, lawyers on both sides are still trying to make their case, or in the defense’s end, to try and dismiss it. We’ll need to wait and see what the results of this are. Given the fact that the IRS hasn’t done anything to religious orgs that break their rules, I have very little faith that anything will happen. Society tends to give an infinite get-out-of-jail-free card to religion. I can’t imagine a time where that will ever change.
If you’ve ever read Jon Krakauer’s excellent book, “Under the Banner of Heaven”, you may already be aware of the apocalyptic sects that exists within Mormonism. When you think of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, usually what comes to mind is the rather silly elements of the faith: their weird obsession with magic underwear, the idea that Jesus came from another planet, and their prohibitionism on everything from alcohol to caffeine. What Krakauer discussed in his book is the fundamentalist aspect of Mormonism, which tends to bring out the worst in people.
Chad Daybell was such a fundamentalist. He began his career by writing religious fiction, which at first allowed him to quit his job working as a grave digger. His earnings were modest, and so, to avoid having to continue to work in a job he obviously hated, his writings began to take on a far darker and more apocalyptic tone. This found him a larger audience, and he started getting more popular among Mormon extremists.
Chad’s stories echoed the worrisome changes that were happening in his mind. He spoke of God talking directly to him, specifically telling him about the end times. He claimed later to have experienced several near death experiences, and that the result was that he could now receive supernatural visions. His fiction was beginning to merge with his real life.
Things really started to turn when he met a woman named Lori Cox, a former contestant in the Miss Texas beauty pageant. Cox was on her fourth marriage by then, one of which had produced a son named Joshua (although everyone called him J.J.). She quickly became obsessed with Daybell and his strange sermons. By 2019, the two had convinced one another that they had been married previous lives, but both refused to get a divorce from their current spouses. They wished to find “other means” to be together.
Cox’s husband, Charles Vallow, began to suspect that his life was in danger. He started off by getting a protective order, and changing his life insurance policy so that the beneficiary would be his sister. Eventually, he decided that he wanted to make the marriage work, and so the order was rescinded. Then, a few months later, Charles was shot by Lori’s brother Alex, who claimed that it was self defense. Later that day, neighbors reported that Lori had a party not long after. No charges were filled for the killing.
In September of that year, Lori told J.J.’s school that he was being pulled out of classes, and that she would be homeschooling him. No one had seen either him, or his adoptive sister Tylee for quite some time. They were both dead, though no one knew this yet.
In October, Chad’s wife Tammy had been shot at in her driveway by a masked man. The gun, which had either jammed or had not been loaded properly, did not work. When she reported it to the police, they thought the whole thing was a prank, until 10 days later, when they found her dead body. Chad claimed it was from natural causes, and refused an autopsy. The incompetent police obliged him, until some time later when it was finally exhumed when all of the suspicious deaths began to be properly investigated.
Finally, in July of 2020, the bodies of Joshua and Tylee were discovered on Chad’s property. Forensic reports indicated that he had been asphyxiated. Tylee’s cause of death could not be determined, but evidence did suggest that they had attempted to dismember her.
The trials are still ongoing. Both have turned on each other, and claimed that they were emotionally manipulated by the other. It’s rather typical for these kinds of trials: both murderers are unwilling to take responsibility for their crimes. Two children are dead, as well as both of their spouses, and yet they cannot even fathom that all of this was the results of their actions. Instead, these delusional killers would rather blame outside forces than their own decisions. This is the true danger of faith: it transforms people into mindless robots, who think that their actions are mandated by an all powerful being. It’s truly terrifying.
This week, we discuss how Christianity is a death cult, the Catholic Church and how it defends pedophiles, and Mormon leaders being accused of covering up abuse.
There’s an unspoken rule in large religious organizations: if you’re ever caught abusing someone, the church will go above and beyond to protect you. Now, as a decent human being, you might be curious as to why religions are so fond of covering up abuse. The reason is simple: it all boils down to money.
As we recently reported on TGA a few days ago, when the Mormon Church was threatened with a lawsuit for allowing the continued abuse of a young girl, despite having heard the confession of her abusive father, an Arizona judge decided that the church’s right to confession was more important than the good of society. Who knows how many millions of dollars they would have lost in such a suit.
Abusers are naturally attracted to organizations like Mormonism that provide not only fresh victims, but also give them the full authority of church doctrine to excuse their behavior. They also benefit from laws that protect them from legal ramifications. In the case of the Church of Latter Day Saints, it’s especially easy to get in:
Victims who spoke to DailyMail.com said [spiritual confession] was repeatedly used as an excuse for bishops to hide abuse from authorities, often allowing it to carry on for years.
Women claimed church culture acts as a breeding ground for abuse, pointing to the belief within Mormonism that local bishops – laymen with no pastoral training – are divinely called by God and led by spiritual revelations, meaning their authority cannot be questioned.
The DailyMail released a pretty scathing report on Mormon abuse, supposedly inspired by the case in Arizona. They interviewed a number of people abused by their priests, and all of them shared a familiar story: The church is more interested in squashing potential lawsuits than stopping rapists.
Keep in mind that this is the same church that has over 100 billion dollars in the bank. They could obviously afford a few lawsuits. Can you even imagine any other organization in the world that would survive this level of corruption and evil? Just imagine if a modern corporation was guilty of silencing employees, preventing them from going to the police when they find out their colleagues are raping kids. We even allow religious organizations to file for a special type of bankruptcy protection in order for their money to be protected even when they lose judgements against them!
Will there even be a time when we wake up from this abusive con game? I have a question for believers out there: how many of your kids need to be raped before you decide that maybe, just maybe, you should stop financially supporting these guys? I mean for fuck’s sake, people have boycotted companies over not liking how someone identifies, but they can’t do it for an organizations that knowingly allows the sexual abuse of children? I will never understand why the blinders of religion allows them to get away with murder. It’s a moral failing I hope to see corrected in my lifetime.
This week, we discuss the whistleblower who exposed the Mormon Church’s insane financial schemes, a woman who tried to attack Jews but targeted a hate group instead, and a pastor gets away with running over a child.
If I was a criminal organization, I would definitely cloak myself with the veneer of religion. Regardless of your egregious actions, if you’re associated with a recognized faith, there is no crime serious you won’t get away with.
Take a recent example in Arizona, where a judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the Mormon Church on the grounds that spiritual confessions are a sacred right, regardless of what crimes are being confessed. This means that any church official who fails to report serious and ongoing abuses are immune from any responsibility. How outrageous is the crime in question? How about a father who perpetually raped his daughter, confessed to it, and the church did nothing to stop it.
When a young girl was being habitually raped by her father, his confession to his pastor did not warrant the church to communicate with authorities to put a stop to it. He was able to continue to abuse his poor daughter for another 6 years, and had even begun to turn his attention to her 6 week old baby sister.
The church decided to excommunicate the man instead of calling the police, and washed their hands it. Since the man (if he can be considered one) had confessed to his monstrous actions in the presence of a another man trained in the art of make-believe, when the girl finally grew up and tried to sue the church for doing nothing to stop her sexual torture, an Arizona judge made sure that the one being protected was the mega powerful Mormon Church:
In a ruling on Friday, Cochise County Superior Court Judge Timothy Dickerson said the state’s clergy-penitent privilege excused two bishops and several other officials with the church… from the state’s child sex abuse mandatory reporting law, because Paul Adams initially disclosed during a confession that he was sexually abusing his daughter.
“Church defendants were not required under the Mandatory Reporting Statute to report the abuse of Jane Doe 1 by her father because their knowledge of the abuse came from confidential communications which fall within the clergy-penitent exception,” Dickerson wrote in his decision.
Let me remind you that this type of immunity is unique to religion alone. The closest analog we have to this privilege would be that of a lawyer, who is allowed to know about your crimes, without having to reveal details to the authorities. It is not without limitation, however. If there is a possibility of the furtherance of a crime, then your lawyers have a legal (not to mention moral) obligation to notify the police of your future plans. No such limitation exists when it comes to religious “confession”.
The major problem with this kind of immunity isn’t only that it allows criminals to continue to act with impunity. It’s far more sinister than that. Confession is also a way for these monsters to be absolved of their crimes morally. Faiths like Mormonism may claim that believers are bound by an objective morality, but in practical terms, churches have always found ways to involve themselves in the absolving of immorality, if not primarily because it has such good financial returns. It was indulgences that paid for the St. Peter’s Basilica, and the monetary benefits of offering salvation that has the the full power of secular law on its side, with legal protections of such magnitude, continues to fill coffers and puts asses in pews.
There is no end to my discuss when it comes to the privileges afforded to religions, especially when we know for a fact that they are so underserving of it of them. There are few world organizations that should have LESS protection than the major religions, who have fought for years to protect the rapists that live among their ranks. Remove their fancy vestments, or shave their overgrown beards and you would see them for what they are: a bunch of gangsters, rapists and embezzlers that would be right at home in a place that has bars on the windows.
The Mormon Church is in the hot seat again. You may recall that TGA reported on a whistleblower that exposed the church’s finance as being primarily about business and investments rather than charity (their portfolio being over 100 billion dollars). Keep in mind that the main reason that religions are allowed their tax free status is the understanding that monies collected are supposed to be for charitable services. As a result, they were fined a paltry 5 million dollars, which represents roughly .00005 % of their wealth. It would be the equivalent of committing 100,000 dollars of fraud and being fined 5 bucks. Who wouldn’t commit crime with this kinds of punishment?
Not every Mormon is thrilled that money is being used for purposes other than religious. Three members of the church are suing following the whistleblower report that demonstrated that the church uses the funds for everything BUT charitable work.
The church’s corporate arm, the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solicits donations for humanitarian relief with promises that all donations are used to help those in need. But those promises are untrue, the latest lawsuit argues.
Instead, the church allegedly hid the fact that some if not all donations are permanently invested in accounts never used for charitable work.
I would be surprised if this leads anywhere. It’s notoriously hard to get churches to be held accountable for their scams, and with 100 billion in the bank, it’s not impossible to imagine that quite a few palms will be greased before this is all over.
What should happen is fairly obvious: the Mormon Church needs to be taxed on properties and investments which do not meet the standard of charitable contributions. In this case, this would mean that a large portion of their coffers would finally be placed under the same scrutiny of any other major financial organization. However, I can already predict that gutless government agencies will bend over backwards to accommodate these scammers, for fear that they might be accused of being anti-religious (as though this is a bad thing). Anyone expecting justice to be delivered when the guilty are religious organizations are bound to be extremely disappointed. At least it’s nice to know that many of their own members have serious misgivings about continuing to tithe the church. That’s a start, at least.
Have you ever wondered just how much money some of these religious organizations have? As a religious contrarian, my current patreon campaign makes about 30 dollars a month. The Mormon church has a little more: an investment fund of 100 billion dollars to be exact. That’s more than some small nations. And what do they do with this money? Why, find ways to make sure they never pay taxes, that’s what!
Luckily for them, they were only fined 5 million dollars for their pattern of financial obfuscation. Talk about worth it! The IRS is bound to do absolutely nothing about this. They are too scared of the bad optics. Keep in mind that the sole reason churches are granted their special tax status is the presumption that the money would be used for charitable purposes. What kind of good could be accomplished with this kind of money? Well, considering that it’s estimated that it would cost about 40 billion to eliminate world hunger, I think we can all comfortably say that there isn’t one church in the world that gives one shit about it. So long as the coffers grow, they are happy.
Ever wonder what happens in Mormon ceremonies? Well, this guy’s got you covered!
If you’re a religious fundie, odds are your level of respect for other living creatures not gifted with ‘a soul’ is not very high. Most fundamentalists see violence and cruelty towards animals as just a normal part of everyday life. God, in their deluded eyes, gave them total dominion over animals, and that means you can treat them like shit if you want.
How else can you explain this bit of cruelty? Ex FLDS member Isaac Wyler – who left cult leader Warren Jeffs’ little coven a number of years ago – woke up to find a kitten encased in concrete in his back yard. Still alive but terrified, the poor creature was buried to its neck, and left inside a metal tube in his back yard. The kitten was intended to be a warning for Isaac to stop speaking out against the church, and Warren Jeffs in particular. Jeffs is currently serving a life sentence for having forced himself on so many underage girls (the man took a page right out of Joseph Smith’s playbook), but he still appears to have enough power and connections in jail he’s even managed to stop all but 15 of his thousands of followers from having sex (well, I doubt the veracity of this claim, but I digress).
I’d like to tell you rescue workers were able to save the poor cat, but the trauma of being both encased and released from a concrete prison was too much for the little guy. The town sheriff, when made aware of this stunning bit of cruelty, simply laughed it off, and suggested ‘throwing dirt’ on the animal to fix the situation. The fact a police officer won’t take animal cruelty seriously (usually a sign of escalating violence) is itself a consequence of the level of religiosity of the town. What else do you expect, folks? Religion poisons everything, including police work!
When Dan Savage started his “It Gets Better” Campaign in September of 2010, he hoped it would let bullied teens know life improves over time, and the bullying they experience in school is only temporary. For the most part, these videos are meant to speak to young gays and lesbians in high school, where the majority of bullying takes place.
One serious exception to this rule is Brigham Young University, one of the few Universities in the country that has an honor code that specifically prohibits any gay behavior:
“Homosexual behavior is inappropriate and violates the honor code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings”
The video above was made independently by gay, lesbian and straight supporters of the school. While the video seems to suggest to gays at the school there are people around them that “love them”, the truth is the campus is still extremely unfriendly to gays. Since any student can be expelled for engaging in any homosexual behavior, it seems pretty obvious to anyone watching this video the real culprit in all this terrible hate is Mormonism itself. One cannot help but feel as though their message “it gets better” has a hollow ring to it when the very institution has such animosity towards the gay and lesbian community. It would be more accurate to say it does get better, but only if you leave the faith.
The school isn’t very happy about the video, but has decided to take no action, since it claims that:
The honor code…is “based on conduct, not on feeling, and if same-gender attraction is only stated, that is not an honor code issue.
If the message of the religion is still that homosexuality is wrong, then no, it does not get fucking better. Religion, as always, is not the answer.
There are two things that will never change in this world: 1) people will always have reasons to hate others, and 2) religions will always provide a way to make this exceedingly easy.
Take the Mormon Church for example: they’ve been diligently working to ensure that gays and lesbians aren’t allowed to marry out of the ridiculous notion that doing so “violates” the sanctity of marriage. Because of a few passages in the Bible (next to the ones that condone slavery and selling your daughter for money), Mormons have fought tooth and nail to deny the rights of their fellow human beings.
And because they are convinced of the superiority of their ideas, they now feel as though their OWN rights are being violated when society tells them politely to go fuck themselves. They recognize the way the tide is shifting, and it’s not something that’s a pleasant prospect. Tolerance, it seems, is not that Christian a virtue.
One of their elders recently said that as gays get the rights they deserve, the Church’s religious freedoms are being threatened:
Elder Dallin H. Oaks, one of 12 leaders, known as apostles, who help govern the Mormon Church, delivered his message Friday in a speech at Chapman University in Orange: The 1st Amendment right to freedom of religion is under siege, he said, threatened by a growing secularization of society and constrained by the inroads made by a vigorous gay rights movement.
“For some time,” he said, “we have been experiencing laws and official actions that impinge on religious freedom.”
Oaks, a former law professor and Utah Supreme Court justice, has been making speeches along these lines for more than 25 years, and says the climate has been getting worse for religious rights. “It was apparent 25 years ago, and it is undeniable today,” he said.
It’s funny he didn’t say 35 years ago, when the Mormon church didn’t allow black men to be ordained into the priesthood (and they weren’t allowed to be included in their “celestial marriages” either). You might recall that their racism was a direct result of their own religious conviction. Sound familiar?
Hey, it would be fucking effortless for Mormons to abandon their own bigotry and get with the program. In 1978, elders said they had received a “revelation” decreeing that African Americans were suddenly granted the same rights as everyone else in their church; this after strong public pressure to change their policies. It’s easy to change your stupid dogma when you’re just making shit up, isn’t it?
The Elizabeth Smart kidnapping trial is finally over, and because Brian David Mitchel (or Immanuel as he liked to call himself) was found guilty, the question of his mental state, and the mental state of religious people, is being brought to light.
It seems, however, rather than an honest look at the delusion of belief, we’re treated to a rigmarole of “experts” who seem to be too busy defending religious belief to acknowledge just how insane it all really is.
“There is ample research to suggest that, for the most part, religious people are no more inclined to mental illness than nonreligious people,” says Wendy Ulrich, a Mormon and founder of Sixteen Stones Center for Growth, a small group of mental-health professionals, in Alpine, Utah.
The pathology arises, Ulrich says, when a person’s search for meaning “goes into extreme overdrive” and people “lose touch with vital aspects of reality.”
Extreme overdrive you say? That just sounds like people who take their religion seriously to me. Sure, the average religious person is no more insane than his non-religious counterpart, but this is usually due to the fact most religionists don’t actually follow the tenets of their own faith. Who bothers to follow all 613 laws of the Pentateuch? Doing so is the first step towards the nuthouse.
So how can you make the distinction between genuine and false prophet? Through tradition, of course!
“If the pope says he’s the Vicar of Christ, that’s OK because it fits with a centuries-old tradition,” Hood says. “If I think I am, I’m in trouble.”
So tradition is an adequate judge of what’s normal or abnormal? That sounds like another dangerous antiquated belief to me. It used to be a tradition to sacrifice human beings to make the Sun reappear; so is tradition ever really a valid reason to do anything?
If you ask a religious person how God communicates, she might say through impressions or a kind of whispering. But if you ask a mentally ill person that question, he might say, “I shook hands with him yesterday.”
So the difference between a sane person and an insane loon is the sane person doesn’t literally believe God is taking an active role in their lives? I would certainly agree the sanest person is the one who utterly rejects all the nonsense, but I find the functional difference of the two categories of sane and insane religious folks pretty blurry. So far it boils down mainly to the way divine inspiration is delivered.
As a pastor, Johnson says, he would worry about actions that are “destructive to other people or to themselves.”
Mormons are urged to seek and receive God’s guidance for themselves and their families. But only the church’s “prophet, seer and revelator” can receive messages for the whole faith and the world. Such institutional controls may inhibit individual experiences, but they do prevent mentally ill members from distracting or confusing the faithful.
So the only way for individuals not to freak out and listen to everything the voices in their heads tell them to do is to rely on one guy who is actually paid to do it professionally? In other words, if you want to talk to God, you have to pay someone to do it for you. Sounds like a pretty brilliant scam to me.
The real problem here is it’s impossible to get religious folks to admit just how insane the idea of God really is, since they’ve bought it hook, line, and sinker. Even when confronted by the fact believers often act out their violent fantasies through the same faith mechanism they possess, somehow they manage to ignore it completely (presumably because it gives them meaning in their lives). The truth is that we incarcerate self-professed messiahs when we can, and those we can’t often start deadly cults that brainwash and control individuals. After a few hundred years, these cults gain enough respectability to be called religions. That’s generally how things work out.
Even as a young Mormon teen, Elizabeth Smart says she knew the difference between a genuine religious leader and Mitchell.
“God would never tell someone to kidnap a young girl from her family’s home in the middle of the night from her bed that she shared with her sister … and sexually abuse her and give her no free agency to choose what she did,” Smart testified. “I know (Mitchell) was not called of God because God would never do something like that.”
Yeah, God would never command his prophets to kidnap, murder, or rape anyone, would he?
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? … Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
On this week’s show, Ryan and I talk about the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping trial, and its roots in fundamentalist Mormonism. We also talk about how Spiderman, Jesus, and why superheroes tap into something primal within all of us. Also on the show, the new Consider Humanism campaign and our thoughts about it.
